A Thinking Reed

  • Friday Metal: Goes Cube, “The Homes Of”

    Very interesting band.

  • The cycling life

    Grist has a really good article on DC’s popular new(ish) bikeshare program, arguing that a “bikeshare system can make fundamental change happen in a city.” Also see this article: “The Real Reason Why Bicycles Are the Key to Better Cities.” I used Capital Bikeshare for the first time the other day and thought it was…

  • Peter Singer, utilitarianism, Christianity, and climate change

    Here’s an interesting post from Mark Vernon, an English journalist and author (and former priest in the Church of England), reporting on a recent conference at Oxford University on the engagement of Christian ethics with the thought of Peter Singer. According to Vernon, Singer discussed problems that his brand of utilitarianism (“preference utilitarianism”–the view that…

  • Keith Ward on the sacrifice of Jesus

    In his book What the Bible Really Teaches, Keith Ward spends a chapter on “the sacrifice of Jesus.” He wants to contest the popular view that Jesus had to die as a kind of blood sacrifice to appease or deflect God’s wrath–a view, Ward argues, that’s at odds with the biblical view of what sacrifice…

  • Friday Links

    –Ludwig von Mises versus Christianity. –20-plus years of Willie Nelson’s political endorsements. –The media has stopped covering the unemployement crisis. –The Stockholm Syndrome theory of long novels. –An interview with Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City. –Why universal salvation is an evangelical option. –A debate over Intelligent Design ensares an academic journal of…

  • Friday Metal: Graveyard, “Hisingen Blues”

    It’s probably not accurate to call these guys metal–70s-influenced bluesy hard rock is more like it (although they do mention Lucifer!). Still, good stuff. The singer sounds like the love child of Robert Plant and Chris Cornell.

  • The logic of divine love

    I was thinking a bit more about Clark Williamson’s question whether Jesus “constitutes” our reconciliation with God “such that we cannot be reconciled to God without him” or “disclose[s] to us that we have always been reconciled to God.” And I wonder whether there might not be some convergence of positions here, at least at…

  • Yet another perspective on atonement

    This one’s from Clark Williamson, whose work I’m a fan of. The article is called “Atonement Theologies and the Cross.” Williamson surveys some of the main atonement theories and defends a semi-Abelardian view by way of Luther and with a tip of the hat to Girard and process theology. He emphasizes that the cross is…

  • More on Anselm and atonement

    I just finished listening to this presentation by Fr. Thomas Williams–an Episcopal priest, distinguished philosopher, medieval scholar, and blogger–on Anselm and the atonement. Fr. Williams does a terrific job of clearing up some misconceptions about Anselm’s soteriology, and he provides a spirited defense of some of its essential elements. One interesting and I think important…

  • Friday Links

    –With the death of bin Laden, the U.S. has accomplished the aims that justified the war in Afghanistan. Time to leave. –An interview with “eco-economist” Herman Daly: Rethinking growth. –A primer on Christian nonviolence. –The collapse of the “progressive Christian” big tent? –The Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to allow non-celibate gay and lesbians to serve…